ABSTRACT
1 Officers who hold assignments 1 must know that they have no authority over the peasants except to take from them – and that with courtesy – the due amount of revenue which has been assigned to them to collect; and when they have taken that, the peasants are to have security for their persons, property, wives and chldren, and their goods and farms are to be inviolable; the assignees are to have no further claim upon them. If peasants want to come to the court to state their cases, they are not to be prevented from doing so; any assignee who does otherwise must be checked; his assignment will be taken away and he will be reprimanded as a warning to others. They must know that the country and the peasants belong to the ruling power; assignees and governors are like prefects over the peasants [on their lands], in the same relation to them as the king is to other peasants [not on assigned lands]; then everything will be correct and they will be secure from the king’s punishment and from torment in the world to come.
